CIVILIZATION, EDUCATION, AND ART

By Paul Henrickson, © 1963

tm. © 2007
John Dewey defined experience as an educative process. Experience alone is
valueless without the person involved attributing value or power to it. An action
which elicits a satisfying response, aids in molding a change on the part of the
individual. The process of change, adaptive development, and a channeling of
activities will be education for him.

As an example of what is meant we might consider the following: low temperatures

teach us to look for means of keeping warm, and the community instructs, as only a
community can, that clothing which merely satisfies the natural desire for warmth
and modest cover will not meet the demands for group taste or for gender
identification. These impositions on the original practical need imply a element of
selection and in the more highly evolved societies the questions of selection can
attain to such a high degree of refinement as to include or exclude an individual
from polite society on the presence or the absence of a button, more or less on the
sleeve of a man’s jacket.

Captain Cook observed something similar in the actions of the natives of Tierra del
Fuego. He said of them: “They are content to be naked, but ambitious to be fine.” It
is nature which teaches us what we must do in order to survive, it is left to human
nature to devise the artifices by which these needs are to be met.

Not all individuals respond to the demands of society as willingly, or as consistently,

as fortunately, most people do to the demands made upon them by their physical
environment. One individual may respond differently from another to the same
social environment which is intended to civilize them both.

Individuals making up a society express themselves through the medium of that

society, but the society, more often than not, will exert a greater pressure on the
activities of the individual than the individual can on society. The individual is
constantly subject to society’s edicts and it is only within the framework of that
society that the individual can operate most effectively.

In the rise from savagery to what might be called humanism, man passed through
many centuries and a number of differing social structures. The form of education
at any level of development was designed to meet the needs of the time and to help in
maintaining the delicate balance that characterizes a social structure.
Developments, or changes., in education seem to be a consequence of the degree of
ecological dependence social structure, and political development.
Where credit or prosperity was attributed to the elements, or where the group
depended upon wild animals for sustenance, beliefs arose which incorporated these
elements and animals into the group’s religious observances. In the earliest times
religion and education were inseparable. Civic education did not come into being
until the Maccabean control of the Jews. It was not until the 17th Century that John
Amos Comenius formulated his principles of education. These were developments
which we suppose were consistent with that form of society.

Writers at the early part of this, (i.e., 20th Century), reported that the education of
the savage amounted to little more than imitation, although with time it became a
more conscious part of their life it never reached the development where a special
school or institution was formulated.

It might be well to remember that although the savage had no permanent dwelling
for himself and his family, let alone a developed architectural style designed to
satisfy the specialized needs of an institution for learning as we know it. The
education he practiced was most necessary for the survival of the group, and, in the
final analysis, as elementary as it probably was, this education must have been
effective.

A comparison of the paleolithic child’s education with that which today’s child
receives might be instructive. In the twentieth century most children learn of cows
rarely from first hand experience. They may, in fact, never have seen the animal. Yet
it provides a great abundance of food in the form of milk, butter and meat, and
clothing in the form of leather. When one is noticed in the pasture by a present day
child, possibly even by an adult, the reaction is either very mild or, at most,
characterized mainly by the kind of excitement which circuses sometimes generate.

However, were the connection between the cow and our personal survival more
intensely felt, a was undoubtedly the case with the cave man and the wild animals he
knew, the buffalo, elk, fish, etc., our reactions might follow something of this order:
our mouths water, our digestive enzymes flow, we grab out stone spear or hatchet
and stealthily stalk the pasturing cow. The cow, in this hypothetical situation, has
not the benefit as she does in our domesticated circumstances of an education in
“out-to-pasture-manners”, and, therefore, she would be expected to bolt for her life
or, perhaps, charge in self-defense or in defense of her young. Under such
circumstances it is not surprising that the savage education might justifiably stress
the importance of being silent while hunting, of having a sharp spear, or of any
number of immediately important details designed to ensure the success of the hunt
and, therefore, survival.

Savages, we’ve been told, learn to use things but rarely forces, and, therefore, their
chief implements and vessels are of wood, stone, or clay, which ca be shaped without
the use of fire. They were obliged to devour food without cooking it. And because
they were nomads they lived neither in natural caves or in temporary huts. We’ve
heard that their arts were limited to the fashioning of tools for hunting and fishing,
clay vessels and clothing, “in the ornamentation of these they sometimes show the
rudiments of artistic sense…”

Actually, the arts of the Paleolithic man had a greater range of expression and
medium than is suggested by that statement. Modern archeological discoveries have
revealed that fine art had, even at this early stage of development, made its
appearance in the forms of sculpture and painting.

Not only has it been established that the creative activity of the savage caveman
went further than the decorating of hunting instruments, but these prehistoric
periods actually experienced changes in styles of expression. This means that the
savage considered his graphic expression important and meaningful enough to
adapt to altered circumstances or needs, and this was accomplished not merely by
an education by imitation.

With this in mind it would not seem compatible with scientific truth to accept the
belief that the savage a too stupid
Or too lazy to make provision for his future; that he cannot understand, or cannot
make the necessary effort to develop techniques of farming. A statement like the
following is therefore quite misleading: “(the savage) cannot save seed for the next
season’s sowing, or sow seed for next season’s reaping. He cannot for see the future
nor discipline himself sufficiently to provide for it, and accordingly he lives in a
wretched hand to mouth existence, and cannot rise to a fully human mode of life.”
The author of this passage concludes by saying that, “the savage is essentially
improvident”. It would seem, therefore, that the savage ceased to be a savage when
he was able to provide for himself.

In a true evaluation of a regional culture it would seem that a study of the ecological
characteristics present at the time of and in relation to the culture would be of
considerable value in avoiding misconceptions. It should not be difficult to
understand that a savage living in a well-endowed region might have considered
hunting and fishing a surer means of maintaining life than gambling with possible
crop failures.

Hallam L. Movius, Jr., in a report on these prehistoric cultures offers a statement

which should help us abolish all doubts about these savages being either lazy, or
stupid, or lacking in self-discipline.

It is believed that the pigment (for the wall paintings) was first ground to fine powder,
and then placed in shells or in small tubes made from hollow segments of long bones
stopped up at the end. At several cave sites these bones have and shells have actually
been found with traces of ochre in them. They are associated, moreover, with flat palettes
on which the pigments were ground. Next, the powder material was mixed with some
ratty substance easily obtained from the animals regularly killed in the hunt, and the
paint applied to the cave wall
In addition to the archeological evidence of Paleolithic man’s ability to and interest
in preparing for future needs the following observation of the aesthetic quality of
their work is of interest:

The art of the hunter-artist is the art of a roaming hunter culture in which men first gave
expression to their emotions as artists by infusing proportion, symmetry, quality of line,
and decorative fitness into their objects of the hunt, of daily life, and of personal
adornment. In their cave paintings of animals they proved themselves men of sure eye,
able to grasp essentials and express them with an economical and forceful naturalism. In
some of the paintings and carvings, especially those of the human figure,(which so far as
we can tell had no magical significance), the artists’ feelings tend away from the visual
impression toward a mental conception and thus toward a more abstract kind of
representation.

If we look at the subject matter of our creative savages we find that, for the most
part, their interests were directed towards what we believe to be their primary
means of support, the wild bison, mammoth, reindeer, rhinoceros. Occasionally,
representations of the human were attempted, and from these we learn that these
“improvident” savages had invented the bow and arrow. This invention made it
infinitely easier for them to stalk the animals from which they received the greater
part of their food and clothing.

Almost invariably and except in those places where time and the elements have
conspired to erase the traces of the drawings, the vigor, sureness and simplicity of
the representations betray a keen familiarity with the habits an the anatomical
structure of their subjects. The evident distortions in position do not rise from a
lack of knowledge about the subjects, but rather from a desire to represent the
salient features.

This point brings us to a consideration of the purposes these drawings, engravings

and paintings may have served. Why were they placed as they were, in the dark
recessed of, presumably, uninhabited caves? In my opinion the most plausible
explanation is that offered by Hallam L. Movius, Jr., although he does not satisfy me
with his claim that there were sacred ceremonies associated with these works.

When we ask why Upper Paleolithic man went to such trouble, and why, indeed, he
created his art at all, we must remember that he lived in a vigorous and demanding
environment. To him, success in the hunt was the difference between plenty and hear or
actual starvation; this we know from the live of primitive hunting peoples existing in
similar climatic conditions today.

Such people do not draw merely for the sake of expressing themselves, or creating a
beautiful picture, or making records of the animas they hunt. Art to them is a means of
propitiating the spirits of the animal –world. Upper Paleolithic cave art is found in
places that are perpetually dark; the artists preferred even the most inaccessible corners
of the caves. Thus it seems clear that the pictures were not solely for decorative
purposes…It is also likely that certain crannies of the caves were particularly sacred,
and that the spell cast there were especially effective.

In summarizing his article, Mr. Movius admonishes us not to lose awareness of the
natural creativeness of the individual artist through our search for some meaning of
the work. Thus, the field is left open for great speculation. It would be true,
however, that any consideration of cave-man art which overlooks the vigorous
vitality, sensitive awareness of form, subject content, and detail is regretfully doing
and injustice to a style of living which appears, at least in the area of graphic
expression, to be impressively capable of clear enunciation.

The educational value of this art is clear. It can teach us what these people knew,
how well they knew it and what it was they considered important. What value the
practice of this art was to them might be more difficult to determine. In addition to
the possibility that these drawings served as magical or religious symbols, we might
consider the existence of such art as evidence of early man’s sensitive intelligence in
matters which were of most concern to him. The fact that he chose to record his
vivid impressions might lead us to suspect that he considered painting a socially
necessary act. The contributions of archeology and art history as well as those of
aesthetics are of considerable value in contributing to our understanding of that
period. An acceptable education cannot be indoctrination, but rather a consequence
of empirical experience combined with scientifically controlled study wherever
possible and appropriate.

It was mentioned above that civic education had not made its appearance until the
time of the Macabbean control of the Jews. Even then, civic education was not
entirely independent of deified authority.
The Jews never attained to complete moral authority. Their law-giving Power and their
Law both remained external, being obeyed rather as authorities than a embodiments of
reason.

It remained for the Hellenes to further humanize education although the individual
so educated still ideally submitted to the greater civic interest under the aegis of the
state and in the person of a “tyrant” elected by, not all, but only, the free citizens.

Greek education stressed the perfection of individual excellence in bodily strength

and beauty, and the instruction of the mind or soul in wisdom, temperance,
fortitude, and justice. The perfection of these qualities in an individual were
directed not to persona ends, pleasures, or desires which may have interested the
individual, but for the good of the public, the state, for social and political life.

It has been pointed out that Greek education fell into three categories: (1)
Gymnastics, (2) Purgation, (3) Instruction. The character and purpose of education
in gymnastics is obvious, the other two, purgation and
instruction may requite some explanation. Music, which was never disassociated
from poetry, was the major concern of the pedagogues. Both were included in the
curriculum for two reasons. As purgatives , music and poetry were used to purify
the soul and, therefore, were arts in a somewhat therapeutic sense. When used as
subjects for instruction, music and poetry assumed some of the aspects of the
sciences. Thus, we learn, the arts of music and poetry after having been employed
as an expressive (creative) medium for the purgation of the soul, a scientific value
was hen attributed to the art product, which then received critical analysis from the
observer.

This educational system implies a recognition of the worth inherent in the creation
of and in the study of the arts. This implication is important, a fact which
contemporary psychologists like Frank Barron, J.P. Guilford and E. Paul Torrance
have recognized. Their current research in creativity has endeavored to formulate
and to prove some related hypothesis.

Unfortunately, not all the seven arts enjoyed similar reputations among the Greeks.
Even though schools of art were established in secluded groves near streams or o hill
tops, places which were believed to have been sacred to the nine inspiring muses, the
other arts failed to achieve the recognition for their contributions to education
which music and poetry achieved. These schools were, somehow, more closely
related to other matters, for they became the gathering places of the devotees of art,
later grew into the vast and wealthy treasuries of the great sanctuaries of Delphi and
Olympia and, on occasion, were used as means of political ransom.

Craftsmanship was appreciated and lauded, but individual expression within the
field of art seemed to be an unknown quality. In spite of the individualistic nature of
the Greek which the historian Rene Sedillot seems to emphasize, it was the aim of
the pre-golden-age Greek sculptor to master realism, a realism, however, controlled
by certain canons of proportion currently accepted.

In spite of the fact that these schools were primarily workshops placed under the
very patronage of the gods, the fact that a school had been formed at all implies that
there was a way of working, a particular approach, a particular philosophy of
aesthetics which was dealt with consciously. It may have been from just such schools
that changes in concept first took root. Andre Gide, in Theseus has Daedalus explain
in supernatural terms and innovation in the artistic exploitation of the material.

He (a sculptor) becomes a popular favorite, and claimed to uphold the dignity of the
gods, by representing them with their lower limbs set fast in a hieratic posture, and this
incapable of movement; whereas I was for setting free their limbs, and bringing the god
nearer to ourselves. Olympus, thanks to me, became once again a neighbor of the earth.
By way of compliment, I inspired, with the aide of science to mold mankind in the
likeness of the gods.
The “old education” was an education emphatically for civic manhood, and was
eminently successful. Its ideal was the perfect citizen. But wit the rise of reflection
and philosophy the Greek mind experienced a distinction between science and
theology. Bertrand Russell reports that Philosophy began with Thales (c.585bc) who
was a native of Miletus in Asia Minor, a fact, if true, which would seem to parallel
the development of Greek sculpture of a century later. And in their way the words
that Gide puts into the mouth of Daedelus can be interpreted in a similar light.

Out of this new-found freedom of the intellect rose a dark cloud which threatened to
undermine, something which it was eventually successful in accomplishing, the basis
of Greek political and ethical life, and needless to say, because education which is
sponsored by the state serves the ends of the state, of Greek education as well.

Since the old Greek theology and the education which rested in part upon it was no
longer a vital basis for the Greek way of life, a new and seemingly valid theology had
to be sought. This development is indicated by Bertrand Russell when he reports
that Athenians eagerly listened to philosophers from other cities. The answer to this
was ultimately sought in man himself. Socrates was able. By his dialectic method, to
support the individual’s claim to an independence of value, and to successfully adapt
the philosophy to current moral life. He is credited as having discovered free
personality and moral freedom.

This change came about largely a result of the Peloponnesian War, the war which,
by the defeat of Athens, and the futile efforts on the part of Sparta and Thebes to
assume a truly leading position, left the Greek City States open to the domination of
Phillip of Macedon. As had already been stated this crisis in Greek history brought
about a startling change in Greek thought. Previously Greek education had
concentrated o the development of the individual’s physical and mental traits, but
with the fall of the state as a political power, together with the rise of philosophy and
reason (skepticism) it was necessary to reorganize the traditional objectives with the
newly developing political and moral orders. So we see from the time of Alexander
the Great and into the time of the Roman conquests in that area the educated Greek
was sought after as tutor to the children of the powerful and wealthy. In the end it
as this change which marked the end of Greek culture and the beginning of
Hellenistic culture.

The results of these changes on Greek culture were expansive. It became more
varied, complex ,and cosmopolitan. New Cities, instead of growing and expanding in
a haphazard fashion as they had done were now subject to advance “town-
planning”. Pienne was laid out on a plan which was not only related to the
topography of the area but to the convenience of everyday life as well.

The change from a state and god-derived authority to an attitude of complete.

Moral autonomy produced in the arts a comparable change. The most significant
development in sculpture was a certain relaxation of he canons of expression which
cleared the way for a more personal mode of exploiting the material. Ordered
design of natural material gave way to a more lucid rendering of the accidents of
nature.

In succeeding centuries the degeneration of art forms was characterized by a more

varied subject matter. What mad these woks artistically inferior was the creative
concept, or lack of it, involved. Some critics have observed that the later works
were trivial or frivolous, sometimes charming, often repulsive, frequently of high
technical excellence but rarely possessing a full-blown, ripened, culturally approved
and shared meaning. Now, to the astute reader, this last statement may quite clearly
attract his focused attention for in it, seems to be harboring, an ambivalently
hovering organic sense of the meaning of change. Culturally approved works, to
remain viably expressive of the group, must move the group, as a group, to yet
another level of aesthetic awareness. Since most individual works of art are static,
paintings, sculpture, architecture and even the performing arts, in the sense that the
script that is followed is not usually altered, this implies and organically evolving
plastic aesthetic which from season to season somehow registers the morphology of
cultural thought. Observers of the cultural milieu in the United States and the
Western world generally may see how this concept applies today.

The old Greek life, its idealism, art education, ultimately suffered a complete
collapse in spite of the efforts of its philosophers to wrest it from that course which
they themselves had helped to set.

With Plato’s philosophy of extra-subjectivity, a world of thoughts existing outside

and apparently having little connection with the objective world, not unlike the
present-day theory of “memes”, something a kin to bodiless notions that affect
human thought processes infecting brain after brain until a cultural “norm” can be
established, there came a rejuvenation of the worth of subjective experience.

Thomas Davidson reports that “…civic solidarity began to give way to celestial
solidarity, until, finally, the natural and the civic came to be regarded as something evil,
to be escaped from as soon as possible,…the body was no regarded as a prison or a
tomb, and death s the transition from appearance to reality.

While Greece remained an embodiment of its civic ideals she was healthy. As soon as
that mental set toward the self and the community had reason to be doubted first as
a result of the Peloponnesian War and secondly through the spread of certain
philosophical statements, the force and validity which had directed Greek civic life
ebbed. The dissipation of its ideals was mirrored in its products, a fact that has
already been discussed.

Greece may be likened to a mother dying of childbirth of the very seed she fertilized
in her womb, skepticism born of reason, and which was ultimately o aid in her
destruction, as it was destined to infect the rest of the world with its potency and
eventually, after a somewhat extended infancy, make possible a more human
culture.
It was during the period of rejuvenation called the Renaissance that the expression
of human life, education, art, scholarship, reaches its peak. Here is the study of
man’s study or man, his tolerance and enjoyment of the eccentricities of his
neighbor, or, at least some of them, forming a kind of new ideal of a civility, an ideal
that is frequently shattered and reformed out of some kind of convenience. The
phoenix of Europe rises again and repeats in a not too altered a form and retraces in
some approximate way the development it had experienced once before from the
pre-classical Greece to its Hellenistic expansion we now see emerging from the dark
ages into the brilliant light of the Rococo.

We have seen this advance of education and art from a savage state where the
individual recognized himself as an effective tool in the survival of the tribe, where
education knew nothing of the erudite, but harsh real experiences. His art, as we
saw, illustrated his intense concern for the sources of his immediate survival, to
evolve, after about a millennium, into an international style based largely on the
Greek idea of man as individual, and with the Romans the extension of social order
to encompass concepts of empire that largely were devoid of parallel developments
in the arts but were characterized, instead, by a kind of procrustean order, which, in
its turn, was brought down by spiritual doctrines of self-sacrifice and humility. It
took another half millennium for man to recover his hopefulness and creative spirit.

The Renaissance reveals to us an epoch that enjoyed the most complete flowering of
the individual in erudition, in aesthetics, in hedonism, in short, the Renaissance was
a climax in the development of an individual’s multifaceted potential. It was a
period of intense activity in nearly all phases of human industry.

If it is possible to name any one year or any one event which might be aid to mark
the beginnings of such a development, then Francis Henry Taylor would propose the
year 1407 A.D. and the event was the competition for the first pair of bronze doors
for the Baptistry at Florence.

Actually, the stirrings of the Renaissance began earlier. The Catholic philosophers
Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) took up where
Aristotle left off. They introduced into the intellectually dormant Middle Ages the
pagan habit of reflection which threatened the dogmatic mysticism of medieval
times.

The reactivated interest in Greek Literature and sculpture ignited in the early
Renaissance mind a passion for antiquity. This “reawakening of aesthetic
consciousness” produced a desire to recreate in art and literature the concept of
“fine art”. The Romans, however, may be considered the first to have developed
this concept on a grand scale. The Renaissance may be considered to be the first
period in history which consciously attempted to create an art form that was, per se,
aesthetically satisfying. The concept of art as a field of human activity distinctly
separated from political or theological considerations now enters human
consciousness, but it will take several hundred more years before that concept is
fully manifested.

True, with the rise of philosophy and reflection in Greece the realization of the
individual as a distinct entity had a budding recognition, at least it did
philosophically, but the strength of a civilization evidently lies in the continuing
validity and appropriateness of its basic premises.(1) The Renaissance had its
beginnings with that very concept which destroyed Greece.

Florence is considered to be that fertile spot where the Renaissance first took root;
and the Medici family, eleven generations of them, were the watchful gardeners of
this vigorous plant. From 1407 to 1743 their assiduous activity in promoting not
simply the creation of new works of art but similar enterprises in all areas of
learning have left the world an impressive legacy.

By 1444Cosimo had founded the Medici Library which was later to be known as the
Laurentian Library. Additions to the original collection brought the value of the
library up to $15,000,000.(2) Lorenzo the Magnificent allotted an annual
expenditure for books alone of from $3,250,000 to $3,750,000. Some of the Greek
and Roman manuscripts in the collection have served as the basis for much present
day scholarship.

The sudden burst of importance attributed to individual artists during the

Renaissance I all the more remarkable when one remembers the disdain with which
the artists in the classical ages were held.*(3). The Medici, on the other hand, left
few artists of talent or reputation untouched by their talents as entrepreneurs.

In this period the artist rose not only in professional stature, but as men of politics
as well. Leonardo, Cellni, and Rubens can serve us a examples. Ruben’s classical
rejoinder to the courtier who remarked to him that “The Ambassador paints during
his free time?” indicates the preeminence which the occupation of painting held for
Rubens over that of the affairs of state. “no”, he is said to have replied, “the painter
acts as ambassador during his free time.”

The attitude of the Renaissance man toward works of art had two distinct
characteristics. Not only were the art products of the time appraised for what ever
aesthetically satisfying qualities they possessed, but they were frequently the
valuable and choice loot of political uprisings and intrigues. Until then, works of art
had not attained such a status of importance in the world of economics. The fate of
works of art during and after the Second World War and the recent prices reached
at auctions are reminders of the continued high status they hold. After the death of
Georgia O’Keeffe, certainly not one of America’s very best artists, but, without any
doubt, one of her best known her estate was valued at $120,000,000, an amount that
would have kept the Laurentian Library functioning for another 40 years.
Taylor suggests that the success of the Renaissance collections in achieving a high
standard of excellence was due, at least in part, to the patrons having listened to the
advice of artists. Thus it is during the Renaissance that a criterion of judgment
arises which does not as its first consideration try to satisfy the functional
considerations of the work, e.g., as votive or commemorative pieces, but emphasizes,
instead, the aesthetic values inherent in the work itself. Now a finer distinction is
being sought, namely, refinements of individual presentation, technique, power of
expression. (4)

Such was the temper of art patronage during the Renaissance. The artist’s social
position was greatly improved. His position was more than that of a clever image-
maker such as it had been during the Greco-Roman era; his works were now
regarded with much respect, and often, as it was in the case of Raphael and
Leonardo, the artist was a socially welcome guest in the homes of world leaders. In
the Renaissance the artist and the patron met on the common intellectual ground of
their own times and on highly personal and individual terms. Their sharing of the
same Renaissance spirit was the only necessary link between them.

The pattern begins to emerge that suggests, as Aristotle did, that it is only when man
actively indulges his talents and becomes an active and creative participator in the
empirical world that he enriches his own material, spiritual, and intellectual life as
well as those of others. While the great majority of the above was written prior to
the availability of the personal computer and the World Wide Web, I will take this
opportunity, because it defies neglect, to state that with these new powers available
to so many more creative individuals it would be a matter of a reverse miracle if yet
another renaissance of man’s creative spirit did not burst forth…at least eventually.

Modern research into the nature of creativity also underscores the fact of a shift in
view-point regarding the deeper dimensions of the individual personality. Torrance
reflects this type of thinking when he reports that scattered evidence from a number
of sources leaves little doubt that “the stifling of creative desires and abilities cuts at
the very roots of satisfaction in living and ultimately creates overwhelming tension
and breakdown.”

On final but important observation relative to the inheritance the Greeks did not
leave us, or, at least, one that we refused. Many historians of the classical Greek
periods have remarked, almost as though in passing, that the marbles we so admire
today were painted even those on the Parthenon frieze were painted. This fact had,
apparently, been slow in penetrating the consciousness of commentators and even
today, in so far as I am aware, while the fact may be noted its significance to the
Greeks and to us, and these are very different significances aesthetically have not
elicited comment.

What the fact that the Greeks felt it desirable to paint their marble statues probably
meant to them was that the original material, the marble, was insufficient as a
finished surface for sculpture. The Greek saw, one has a right to suspect, no
aesthetic value in the surface of marble, no value in the interplay of light and dark
over an homogenized surface, and one might extend this observation as to suggest
they saw no value in the organization of sculptural space such as one sees in the
work of Henry Moore for example. In short, these aesthetic values did not exist in
the mind of the Greek and came into being, by accident, as a consequence of a
misunderstanding, a misreading of the Greek works. In fact, the mind of the 21st
century man probably would reject the original Greek aesthetic as approximating
the barbaric in its emphasis on painted sculpture. Thus this strong Greek emphasis
on observed reality and the obvious desire to replicate it might encourage a
reinterpretation of what we’ve considered to be a classical Greek concept. I, for
example, still bring to the contemplation of Greek work a vision, an expectation, an
awareness for which there is no evidence had ever been theirs.

NOTES:
1), Torrance wrote that “democracies collapse when they fail to use intelligent,
imaginative methods for solving problems. Greece failed to heed such a warning by
Socrates and gradually collapsed as a consequence.”
2), Francis Henry Taylor is the source of this information. See the bibliography for a
complete listing.
3), Taylor (p.13) reports that: “While in recent years evidence has turned up to show
that citizenship was conferred on exceptional artists like Phidias and Polygnotus,
generally speaking artists were thought of as common laborers and artisans.”
4), These are the very qualities currently occupying the attention of those
psychologists undertaking research in creativity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carey, Graham, Art in Time, from a lecture given at The Fogg Museum of Art,
Harvard University, July 1939, John Sevens, Newport, Rhode Island.

Davidson, Thomas, A History of Education, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901.
292 pp.

Dewey, John, Experience and Education, New York: The Macmillan Co., 1952.

Gardner, Helen, Art Through the Ages, 3rd. edition, New York: Harcourt, Brace &Co.,
p.38. 851pp.

Movius, Hallam L. Jr., Archeology and the Earliest Arts, The Scientific American,
August 1953.

Taylor, Francis Henry, The Taste of Angels, Boston: Little, Brown &Co.

Torrance, E. Paul: from a variety of writings.